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Bio

Poet and prose writer SHANN RAY teaches leadership and forgiveness studies at Gonzaga University, and has served as a visiting scholar in Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, and North America.

A former professional basketball player, Ray’s collection of stories American Masculine (Graywolf) was named a “3 Books Every Man Should Read” selection by Esquire Magazine, and won the American Book Award, the Bakeless Prize from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and two High Plains Book Awards, for Best Story Collection and Best First Book.

A finalist with Ted Kooser’s Splitting an Order and Erin Belieu’s Slant Six, Ray’s book of poems, Balefire, (Lost Horse) won the High Plains Book Award for Poetry. His chapbook of poems, Atomic Theory 432, appears with Mudlark.

Ray’s novel AMERICAN COPPER (Unbridled) is a love song to the United States revealing the radiant and profound life of Evelynne Lowry, a woman who transcends the national myth of regeneration through violence. American Copper won the Foreword Book of the Year Readers’ Choice Award and the Western Writers of America Spur Award. The novel was also a finalist for the Washington State Book Award, the High Plains Book Award and the Foreword Book of the Year Award for Literary Fiction.

American Copper has been called “expansive and luminous” by Debra Magpie Earling, “lyrical, prophetic and brutal, yet ultimately hopeful” by Dave Eggers, and “tough, poetic, and beautiful” by Sherman Alexie. The novel was excerpted by Esquire, Fugue, High Desert Journal, McSweeney’s, and Tin House, and honored with critical acclaim in reviews ranging from New York to San Francisco, along with a Kirkus Reviews Star awarded to books of exceptional merit.

Ray is also the author of a work of political theory, Forgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity (Rowman & Littlefield), and Conversations on Servant Leadership co-edited with Larry Spears (SUNY Press). He writes poetry and prose as Shann Ray in honor of his mother Saundra Rae, and social science as Shann Ray Ferch. He played college basketball at Montana State University and Pepperdine University and professional basketball in the German Bundesliga, one of Europe’s top professional leagues. A licensed clinical psychologist specializing in the psychology of men, he lives with his wife and three daughters in Spokane, Washington.

Born and raised in Montana, Ray’s work considers the nature of humanity with regard to violence and forgiveness. He holds a dual MFA in poetry and fiction from the Inland Northwest Center for Writers at Eastern Washington University, a Masters in clinical psychology from Pepperdine, and a PhD in systems psychology from the University of Alberta in Canada. He has served as a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Fellow, a research psychologist for the Centers for Disease Control, and as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is the editor of The International Journal of Servant Leadership.

His work has been featured in some of America’s leading literary venues including Poetry, Esquire, McSweeney’s, Narrative, Prairie Schooner, America, Borderlands, Southern Humanities Review, Diode, LitHub, StoryQuarterly, The American Journal of Poetry, Poetry International, South Dakota Review, High Desert Journal, Tin House online, Fugue, Northwest Review, and Montana Quarterly. Ray is the winner of the subTerrain Poetry Prize, the Crab Creek Review Fiction Award, the Poetry Quarterly Poetry Prize, the Pacific Northwest Inlander Short Story Award, the Ruminate Short Story Prize, and the Creative Writing Distinguished Alumni Award from Eastern Washington University. His work has been selected as notable in the Best American Sports Writing, Best American Nonrequired Reading and Best of the West anthologies, as a finalist for the Western Writers of America Spur Award in short fiction, as a finalist for the American Short Fiction Short Story Prize, as a NarrativeStory ContestSilver Winner, and appeared in the Best New Poets and Best of McSweeney’s anthologies. Ray has served as a Milton Fellow Mentor at Seattle Pacific University, and as a Visiting Writer at Pepperdine University, the University of Montana Western, Pacific University, Dickinson State University, Hope College, and Seattle Pacific University. His influences include Melanie Rae Thon, Sherman Alexie, Sandra Alcosser, Li-Young Lee, Claire Davis, Milan Kundera, bell hooks, Toni Morrison, James Welch, Michael Ondaatje, Louise Erdrich, Leslie Marmon Silko, A.B. Guthrie, William Kittredge, Sharon Olds, Anne Sexton, Richard Hugo, Richard Ford, Katerina Rudcenkova, C.D. Wright, and Hillsong United with Taya Smith, Joel Houston, Jadwin Gillies, and Brooke Fraser.